Intra-action of Paper and Hedgerow Chemistry

Creating a printed keepsake celebrating Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory provided the opportunity to develop a material ecopoetry, that enables the non-human and human to create meaning together, in sympoiesis (Haraway, 2016), through material semiotics. I explored wood-pulp free papers, and let tannins, iron salts and wood ash alkalis intra-act on the page – letting the matter speak for itself. After experimenting with papers made from cotton, bamboo and agricultural waste, I found that PaperWise, made from agricultural waste was able to withstand repeated wetting from the dye process, and also took letterpress print very well. I discovered that PaperWise is not the first paper to be made from agricultural waste and that it has a lower carbon footprint than paper made from wood-pulp and recycled paper. Rigby (2004) advocates for a ‘negative ecopoetics’ which points beyond the words – and I responded to this in letterpress print, by over-printing two different texts on the page, effectively self-cancelling both. I hope that the keepsake recipients read and interpret both the non-human and the human elements as a whole – the paper, dye, modifiers, and letterpress print – as an ‘ecology of texts’ (Calhoun, 2020).